Saturday, December 26, 2015

It doesn’t take up as much media space as ISIS beheadings,
but Palestinian terrorism should not be ignored. After all, the Palestinians
have been world leaders in terrorism. Their world is the laboratory for
terrorism.

Their death culture is dedicated to killing Jews and to
destroying the state of Israel. They refuse to build a functioning economy
because anything resembling success would take away from the righteousness of
their cause. Obviously, it is not so obvious that they would know how to do so
or would be capable of doing so. Either way, we should pay some attention to
their latest “intifada.”

Young Palestinians with kitchen knives are
waging a ceaseless campaign of near-suicidal violence that Israeli leaders are
calling “a new kind of terrorism.” Four attacks occurred in the past 48 hours
alone — two stabbings and two vehicular assaults.

There have
been about 120 attacks and attempted assaults by Palestinians against Israelis
since early October, an average of more than one a day. At least 20 Israelis
have been killed; more than 80 Palestinians have been shot dead by security
forces and armed civilians during the assaults.

There
is a numbing repetition to the news: A knife-wielding Palestinian at a military
checkpoint or bus stop is shot dead at the scene — or “neutralized,” as the
Israeli news media say. Many of the assaults or their aftermaths have been
captured on cellphone video.

A
review of the violence, alongside interviews with Israeli and Palestinian
officials, reveals attacks that do not fit past patterns. There is a sense on
both sides that something unprecedented is happening, a shapeless rebellion of
individuals driven by an unknowable combination of hatred and despair.

Apparently, this new form of terrorism is more difficult to
stop because it is not organized and directed. It is random and spontaneous,
the product of a culture that brings up its children to hate and to kill, not
to work and to produce.

Of course, Palestinians blame it all on Israel. They are
radically incapable of taking responsibility for their own behavior and for
their own failure. The shining example of Israel causes them shame and their
culture has only two ways of dealing with it: homicide and suicide.

Is the Palestinian cause being eclipsed by all the attention being given to ISIS? Not really. After all, the Palestinians know that they have a friend in the White House, a
friend who sold out to the Iranian mullahs, and who has treated Israel’s prime
minister with unprecedented contempt. Since Obama has only a year left in
office, and since it is likely that the next American president will be far
less sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, it makes sense for Palestinians to try
to induce Obama to pressure Israel into rewarding them for being dysfunctional.

And, of course, Palestinians have made some progress during
the Obama administration. The BDS movement has been growing on American college
campuses. Recently, the National Women’s Studies Association voted by a large
majority to support BDS. One imagines that they prefer the way Hamas treats
women to the way Israel treats women. Or else, they are all a band of complete fools.

Students for Justice in Palestine members have taken to shouting down
pro-Israeli speakers on American campuses. American college administrators are
typically supine in the face of this assault on free expression. Thus, SJP has gained legitimacy on campus and in Obama's America.

And when European officials recently decided that any goods
produced on Israel’s West Bank settlements needed to be labelled as such,
American officials acquiesced.

In a
stinging rebuke to Israel, the European Union insisted
on Wednesday that some goods produced on land
seized in the 1967 war must be labeled “made in settlements,” a mandate that added
to Israel’s deep unease over a growing international boycott.

European
officials tried to play down the decision, saying the guidelines merely
clarified existing rules. But the move exacerbated already simmering tensions
between Israel and Europe as Israeli politicians condemned it as an echo of the
Holocaust-era branding of European Jews and their storefronts with yellow
stars.

The European Union is
Israel’s top trading partner, though products from the occupied West Bank, the Golan Heights and East
Jerusalem that will now require special labels amount to less than 1 percent of
Israel’s $13 billion in annual exports to the bloc’s 28 countries. But while
the immediate economic impact is expected to be minimal, there is fear that the
logic behind the labeling could be extended to the broader economy by targeting
businesses that have operations or affiliates in the contested areas, as many
do.

Certainly, Palestinians see this EU action as recognition
that their cause is just. The state department refusal to condemn the EU is an
added success. Why would they not ramp up the terrorism and do everything in
their power to deprive Israelis of the good life that they have built.

If the European Union is willing to respond favorably to
terrorism and if it has in many places been willing to allow more and more Muslims
into its cities and towns, why should Palestinians do anything other than what
they are doing? They will not have to build their own country. They look
forward to the day when they will be able to take over what someone else built.
Right now they are in the process of invading Europe, under the aegis of Mama Merkel and Time Magazine.

One suspects that the EU believes that it buy off Muslim
terrorism by siding with the Palestinians against the Jewish State. In that
they are making a serious miscalculation.

David Goldman has noted that this form of terrorism seems to
be unique in human history:

There
have been many wars of extermination, but there is something uniquely
horrifying about today’s terrorism. Never in the history of warfare have tens
of thousands of individuals stood ready to commit suicide in order to harm
enemy civilians. Never for that matter, has one combatant (Hamas in
the 2014 Gaza rocket war) sought to maximize civilian casualties on its own side. The Japanese killed
over 20 million Chinese during the Second World War, but committed suicide in
combat in the attempt to sink enemy warships, not kill enemy civilians. The
Nazis did not ask their soldiers to kill themselves in order to kill Jews.

This form of terrorism is a sign of extreme weakness. The real problem with ISIS and with Palestinian terrorists
is that they are living in a dying civilization. Goldman has described it well:

That is
how it feels to be trapped in a dying civilization. Rationality ceases to have
meaning. Upon learning that you have an inoperable malignant brain tumor, you
might cash in your insurance policy and go on a spree—but not if everyone who
speaks your language and shares your memories already is extinct. In that case
there is nothing to do with your money. You can sit at the bar by yourself and
drink Chateau Petrus. Or you can go out and stab the next Israeli you run into.

If you can't construct, you can only deconstruct what others have built.

5 comments:

It seems like wearing explosives is a scarier form of suicidal terrorism than knives. Or rocket launches into residential areas of course is meant purely for terrorizing people.

We talked before Christmas on stereotypes, how they exist because they're largely accurate. So we have a stereotype here of Palestinian men as uncontrollably violent, who have no reason to live, except to take out an Israeli before they go.

If you believe this narrative, it makes perfect sense that the Palestinians need to go, need to be quarantined, need walls to keep them out. And if some fraction of Palestinians are not violent, are trying to be productive citizens, and raise their own families, not in hate, but in simple peace, they should be understanding towards Israel's efforts. They should become informants against their relatives who are planning violence, and help them get arrested before given the chance to act.

But apparently stereotypes are too strong, and its too easy for peace-loving Palestinians to see Israel is a peaceful nation, interested in their well-being. Instead they see what they want to see, see the brutality in how Israel deals with rock throwing children, or whatever disproportionate response and don't trust the Israeli police any more than the U.S. blacks see the U.S. Police as their friends.

What reverses this distrust, this hopeless despair and rage? How do you identify those on the other side who are not interested in your complete destruction and gain them as allies? How do you cooperate with the enemy without hating yourself as much as you hate what they represent?

I don't have answers. But it does looks like both sides have more than enough hatred, and perhaps equal amounts of self-hatred that can't be touched.

One really has to take the time to read the Quran and understand its history to see why it may not be what many want it to be. Its start in the caves above mecca, the reasons for the moves to Medina and why much of Islam's history is one of violence. Take the time to know what the differences between the Sunnis and the Shias are and why this affected the direction of Islam after Mohammad's death. the internet is replete with a large number of ways to understand Islam. Here are a couple I have selected, but it behooves you to understand to make decisions that will affect you future. Even if one is not religious one needs to understand its impact.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/myths-of-islam.htm

http://www.bibleprobe.com/muhammad.htm

Don't just believe the links I have offered for your perusal. Expand your knowledge.